Pam BakerDomoDomo isn't for newcomers but for companies that already have business intelligence (BI) experience in their organization. Domo's a powerful BI tool with a lot of data connectors and solid data visualization capabilities.

User interface is not intuitive. Steep learning curve. Unwelcoming to new analysts.

Bottom Line

Domo isn't for newcomers but for companies that already have business intelligence (BI) experience in their organization. Domo's a powerful BI tool with a lot of data connectors and solid data visualization capabilities.

Domo (which begins at $83 per user per month) may appear to be a good self-service business intelligence (BI) tool on the surface but it turns out to be much less friendly to business users than IBM Watson Analytics or Microsoft Power BI, our Editors' Choice winners in our self-service BI tool review roundup. Domo is missing machine learning (ML) and natural language components, which many other BI offerings, such as Sisense, already have. With that in mind, Domo is still a worthwhile offering for those willing to invest in the steep learning curve required. Domo has a wide range of application connectors, solid data visualization features, and terrific collaboration abilities.

To help combat its lack of natural language capabilities, Domo is enlisting the help of partners that are building natural language processing and ML apps to rectify those shortcomings. It also has an internal App Store that's chockful of free and paid, prebuilt "cards" (Domo's terminology for connectors) to give users a jumpstart on their projects. Furthermore, it sports an impressive array of plug-ins that might help those familiar with other tools, such as those for the R language, the Informatica data management platform, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

We dinged the company last year for not publishing its pricing but Domo changed its mind on that front a little while ago and now makes its pricing plain on its website. If it sticks to those numbers, then it's only slightly well-positioned to attract small to midsize business (SMB) customers against stiff competition from tools such as Zoho Reports, which begins at just $50 per user per month, or even SAP Analytics Cloud, which not only can satisfy larger organizations but starts at only $21 per user per month.

Still, Domo keeps adding to its product's capabilities to add more value beneath its price tag, and that includes not just new features but add-ons as well. One such add-on is Domo's CourseBuilder app, which was introduced in January 2018 and lets users author e-learning content that publishes as a training module in Domo. This could be very handy for companies that standardize on Domo as their primary data processing tool.

Getting Started

As a mature Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, Domo's front end is entirely on the browser, as expected, so there's no client to download and install. Furthermore, the data cache engine is not a traditional data warehouse. You can manipulate Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) operations and do data cleansing in the engine after the load, and there's no limit on how much data you can store.

While the company cites "more than 450" connectors, only about 114 are immediately available in the "battle-hardened" group. The remainder are not turned on by default and you'll have to get a URL from the Domo support team to use one. Still, that's an impressive number of connectors, and it's highly unlikely you'll have trouble connecting to data anywhere as a result.

True to form, loading data during our testing process was a breeze. With that many ways in, you're not likely to find yourself locked out. Once you click the "Connect Your Data" button, you go to an Options screen. To load my locally stored CSV files, I had to start by clicking on "Data Center." Under the Data Center button is where you'll find the list of data sets that are available to you; this includes anything you have put there and sample data sets, too. From there, it's a simple matter of clicks and drag-and-drops, and your data is ready to work.

If you're in finance or healthcare or any industry or country with a slew of data protection regulations with which you need to comply, then you have a number of options with Domo. You can use the Workbench Tool, which sits on your server or any other Microsoft Windows-based machine to encrypt and then push your data to Domo. Or you can choose one of two hybrid options: You can use an on-premises virtual machine (VM) and use the Domo querying engine behind your firewall, or you can run Domo on another querying engine and it and your data stays behind your firewall.

If, however, you're using Domo in the regular way, as I was, then you can preview, parse, and edit your data next under "Overview" and you can set the auto-update frequency as well. If you want to connect data sources, then you can do that on the Data Center page. Just click "Accounts" and then follow the prompts to add your data sets.

The Data Warehouse button lets you explore the data in an interactive format. A simple click fetches your data and gives you a report on what you have there. This is also where you perform your data prep, data joining, and ETL tasks. While I wasn't a fan of most of Domo's user interface (UI), I found this to be a fairly sweet setup. Then again, I'm a database professional with a lot of familiarity with Structured Query Language (SQL) and Domo is intending this for more general, business-level analysts. The SQL skills and other skills needed to properly and thoroughly do this data prep work may or may not be part of what your organization expects from that level of users, especially in this day and age when self-serve BI apps are being pushed out to the rank-and-file. Bottom line: Folks without an appreciation for SQL and data management skills probably won't find this part of the UI impressive either.

The Discovery Process

In Overview, you choose "Add Card" and pick "Design" to build a card. As hinted at earlier, cards are the center concept in Domo's BI universe. These contain a collection of data and analytics that can then be saved and shared. You can also use templates or cards that other people have made, providing you have permission.

It's a simple process to click or drag and drop your way to a finished card to your liking, but again, this is simple only for experienced users. This app is not aimed at the casual user the way IBM Watson Analytics, Zoho Reports, and even Microsoft Power BI are.

Part of what makes Domo so difficult is that its card concept isn't clearly explained in the system nor is it particularly intuitive, and neither really is the UI overall. It doesn't take much for an experienced analyst to click around and figure it out. But if you don't have a decent exposure to self-service BI apps already, then odds are that you will become totally confused once you pass the "Connect Your Data" button on the very first screen.

I do love the internal messaging system that enables me to share cards with collaborators and even with a support person, if needed. This was a smart feature to have added. Indeed, Domo seems designed for teams and that's smart, too, because most of the heavy BI lifting in any organization is still done by teams. Yes, individuals in your organization can tap into Domo and get what they need done, but your hardcore data teams can still use it to great effect, too.

Data Visualizations

Domo has more than 85 different visualizations from which to choose, which is actually fairly exceptional among its competitors even today. You can create cards and pages and customize them in any way you need, from text editing and single-data points to creating an app for the App Store. Beyond basic charting, though, commands are rather sophisticated and require some drill-down and more advanced skills. Still, output visualizations are very well done, though it's certainly not as easy to make eye-popping, impressive visualizations as it is with Microsoft Power BI.

Overall, Domo's biggest problem is what feels like an outdated UI. This problem likely will rank as an "Okay, we can live with it" kind of learning curve if you have experienced users. But if your end goal is total data democratization for everyone (short of the physical plant custodians and, hey, maybe them, too), then this is probably not the app for you. Instead, check out our Editors' Choice IBM Watson Analytics. If, on the other hand, your team is a collection of data rock stars, then this app is a fast and sensible beast of burden that will carry a tremendous load and consistently deliver good results.

Domo

Bottom Line: Domo isn't for newcomers but for companies that already have business intelligence (BI) experience in their organization. Domo's a powerful BI tool with a lot of data connectors and solid data visualization capabilities.

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About the Author

A prolific writer, Pam Baker's published work appears in many leading print and online publications such as Institutional Investor magazine, CIO, President & CEO magazine, IT World, and ReadWriteWeb as well as many others. Formerly Managing Editor for Wireless IQ and Telematics Journal at NY-Based ABI Research, she also served as a freelance analys... See Full Bio

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